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Living in fear of raids
Concern rises as government teams target the worst offenders

By Tom Kisken, tkisken@VenturaCountyStar.com
July 2, 2006

The rumors buzz like an overworked fan.

In a Santa Paula jewelry store, a saleswoman says immigration police — la migra — interrogated people outside a Latino market in April, putting illegals into a van. The tale at an Oxnard community center is of 30 people arrested at a Somis ranch in mid-June. Workers in a Camarillo lemon grove worry about roadblocks aimed at catching people on their way to and from their jobs.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials brand the stories untrue, although one agent says he couldn't confirm activity even if it did happen; a market supervisor, a ranch owner and others deny the rumors, too.

The fear, however, is real. It is driven by Department of Homeland Security mandates to enforce laws that critics have long considered toothless. Immigration agents say they're not doing random sweeps but are cracking down on undocumented people with criminal records, anyone who has ignored a deportation order, and employers who turn a blind eye to fake Social Security cards.

Ramped-up investigations with labels like Operation Return to Sender have hit Oxnard and Santa Paula. Although investigative teams are stretched so thin that they struggle to identify border-crossers already in county jail, detention and removal teams in Southern California have doubled. That means more officers banging on immigrants' doors at 6 a.m. in visits that may ultimately end with a bus ride to the border.

The teams arrested an average 261 people a month from October through April in a region that includes Ventura County. That compares to 207 arrests a month in fiscal year 2005.

When immigration officers are busiest, or at least when rumors are hottest, the anxiety pulsates. An undocumented woman in Santa Paula holes up in the two-bedroom apartment that she shares with her husband, three children, an aunt and an uncle. A check-cashing counter in Oxnard where people wire money to Mexico is deserted because people worry about raids. Markets and main streets empty, too.

Fear peaked in April and May when immigrants thought that federal police exacted revenge for the nationwide protests where people demanded amnesty. Lately, the rumors have quieted. Still, farmworkers arrive in beat-up cars and vans at a Camarillo lemon grove before 6 a.m. They think that if they come later, la migra could be out in the streets.

"You never know when they're going to be out there," foreman Francisco "Pancho" Torres said. "As soon as (workers) get confident, they're afraid INS will strike."

Cloaked in mystery

Until three years ago, la migra was the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Because of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, border crossing and deportation arrests are the jurisdiction of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is run by Homeland Security.

In Ventura County, ICE resides in two nondescript office buildings off the freeway in Camarillo. In one, 13 field agents juggle detective work on the trafficking of military aircraft parts to Iran and the smuggling of pygmy monkeys from Southeast Asia with investigations on immigration crimes and jail interviews of people who may be undocumented.

The field agents are never quoted. Photos of their work are sanctioned only if their faces aren't shown. Even the directory in the lobby of their building omits mention of ICE or Homeland Security.

Similar discretion surrounds the office a few blocks away that is home to ICE's detention and removal office. Here, supervisors won't reveal the number of officers except to say it is growing.

The detention officers try to make sure that people arrested by the investigators follow the path that leads to deportation. But they also make arrests, pursuing people who have ignored deportation orders. Usually, they show up at someone's door before dawn wearing dark jackets that say "ICE Police."

Until this year, the work of both teams gained little attention in Ventura County or anywhere else. ICE investigators hadn't taken action against a business in the county in two years. Nearly 1,000 people in the county were detained for deportation last year, but almost all came from jail.

Low-profile enforcement was shoved to center stage April 20 at the height of the war in Congress over the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. Homeland Security officials announced directives that target illegal immigrants who are public safety or terrorist risks and anyone considered a fugitive. That last category includes about 590,000 people across the nation, many whose crimes are limited to crossing the border and then staying here.

Also on the list were employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers. In June, federal administrators announced a proposal that could mean prosecution and forfeiture of assets for companies that ignore notifications that an employee's Social Security number may be fake.

On the same spring day the mandates were announced, seven executives and nearly 1,200 workers at IFCO, a Texas-based company that makes shipping pallets, were arrested on suspicion of immigration crimes. Less than two months later, more than 2,100 immigrants across the nation — some of them accused of dealing drugs, abduction, and assault and battery — were arrested as part of Operation Return to Sender.

Agents accused Juan Ramirez-Ramirez of Oxnard, nicknamed El Diablo, the devil, and three other local residents of orchestrating a nationwide smuggling ring. They said the four guided people across the border and deposited them in houses in Oxnard and Yuma, Ariz., treating them more like objects than people. Babies were called "little boxes" and adults were the "big job." The fee was called "the errand," and ranged from $1,600 to $2,800 a person.

Agents say living conditions were so bad and food so sparse at the Yuma house that they found a hand-written sign in a window. "Help Us!" it said. Ramirez-Ramirez's lawyer won't comment on the case, but his client has pleaded not guilty.

Win-win now lose-lose

If agents portray Ramirez as a symbol of the criminal element they want to postmark and ship elsewhere, Marina Ochoa's story is the kind that triggers debate over whether the police and courts are overreaching.

She is 26 and has lived in the United States since her family left a small village in Guanajuato, Mexico, 20 years ago. Now she owns a home in Riverside, works as a medical assistant and has two children ages 2 and 4. Her husband is a deliveryman forFedEx.

Ochoa said she was accused of smuggling because she used her sister's birth certificate to try to sneak a 16-year-old niece in from Tijuana. Ochoa, whose record is limited to seat-belt violations, thought that the girl could baby-sit her kids while also discovering opportunities not available in Mexico.

"It was going to help us and it was going to help her," she said.

What looked like win-win is now lose-lose. The niece was sent back to Mexico. Ochoa spent 30 days in a San Diego detention facility and has asked Ventura lawyer Gabriella Navarro-Busch to fight her pending deportation.

In Oxnard, a woman who didn't realize that her appeal against deportation was denied said ICE police awakened her before dawn on a Friday morning. Her lawyer, Cesar Nava of Oxnard, believes that they let her go because she had a 4-week-old baby and her husband, also wanted for deportation, was already at work.

Other people have simply disappeared. Abbe Kingston, an immigration lawyer from Santa Barbara, reads from a phone message left that day from a woman named Maria worried about her sister.

"Is in custody," the message said. "Was picked up this morning by INS."

Kingston said some of the deportation orders being enforced date back half a dozen years. And while many cases involve people with criminal records, others are aimed at people who have overstayed visas or don't want to leave because their children were born in the U.S.

Christina DeConcini, director of policy at the National Immigration Forum, thinks that the pursuit of fugitives, along with the pledges to crack down on employers, end up victimizing the people who should have a way to become legal. They have jobs. They pay taxes. They contribute.

"The violation is that they don't have a visa, (but) there isn't any way for them to get one," she said. "Increased enforcement against criminals and people who want to do us harm — I think we all agree this is a good thing. ... But I think focusing on the noncriminal population is a real misuse of resources."

ICE officials say they don't do random sweeps aimed at catching anyone here illegally. They say agents are going after a prioritized list of offenders, including fugitives.

"There's a backlog of immigration absconders," ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said. "If the order is handed down by the court and it's not going to be enforced, it undermines the integrity of the court system and the immigration system."

Homeland Security officials deny political motivations. But observers who want tougher laws and those arguing for amnesty think that President Bush is trying to win support for a guest-worker program by proving that he can keep illegal immigration under control.

"This is all public relations," said Mike Cutler of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Pursuing fugitives is one area where immigration police have funding. The number of enforcement teams across the nation is expected to triple by the end of the year. Arrests are projected to rise from 15,000 last year to 25,000 this year.

But while detention and removal resources expand, other immigration enforcement units say they still don't have enough people to enforce laws.

Of the 26 people who work out of an ICE investigations office in Camarillo, a baker's dozen are field agents responsible for everything from terrorist threats and drug smuggling investigations to El Diablo and raids on high-tech mills where Social Security cards are fabricated. They cover Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties in a region that includes about 1.5 million people and, in Ventura County alone, as many as 50,000 illegal immigrants.

Although people regularly deliver tips on employers suspected of hiring undocumented workers, ICE doesn't have the staff to react. Instead, agents focus only on businesses where undocumented workers could pose a security or terrorism risk, such as at military bases, oil refineries and water treatment plants.

"It all goes back to trying to do the most with the resources we have," agent-in-charge David Wales said. "Our hands are somewhat tied because I don't have 100 agents to somewhat sort of blanket the area."

Not enough agents

In the Ventura County Jail's D Block, an agent in plain clothes questions a 20-year-old man arrested on suspicion of passing bad checks. The agent had already fed the man's name through a federal database and determined that he's here without documents.

Tapping his foot against the floor in a staccato, the suspect admits paying a smuggler $2,000 to bring him across the border at Tijuana. His only identification is a fake Social Security card.

The confession means that the man will be turned over to immigration officials for deportation proceedings. It's a fate he accepts without expression, although swearing at the news that he'll have to finish his time in county jail.

Agents won't reveal the man's name or any of the 22 people on this day's list of inmates who were born out of the country and may be undocumented. Sometimes, the list is much longer. But only two ICE agents are assigned to Ventura County jails, and they also handle the California Youth Authority.

Deportation a priority

Homeland Security officials say deporting captive populations of undocumented people is a priority, but Ventura County's numbers are down. Last year, more than 900 people were detained from correctional facilities. Only 384 were held in the first eight months of the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1.

The inmates are there. The agents don't have time to interview all of them.

"There are many that we miss," said Wales, noting that agents give top priority to people accused of crimes like aggravated assault, drug trafficking and child abuse. "There's nothing that is 100 percent, but we work very hard to keep those folks from getting back on the street."

If more agents are coming, Wales hasn't been told. That doesn't mean that his office is immune from pressures to arrest more people. So he juggles resources.

The rumors of raids and checkpoints in Oxnard, Santa Paula, Somis and Ventura make it seem like Wales has dozens of officers. And while he denies the activity, he doesn't deny that his agents are out and about.

"It's not to say we won't visit markets, but we usually do so in a more clandestine fashion," he said. "We're not going to announce that we're there."

Some people believe that fear is what federal police want. They want businesses to follow the law out of the belief that they'll be prosecuted if they don't. They want people who have been deported to leave the country out of concern of what will happen if they stay.

Francisco Romero thinks that federal officials want even more. An Oxnard community activist who supports undocumented workers, he thinks that fear is carefully nurtured so it grows into a paralyzing force that quells follow-ups to the March and May revolts that filled America's cities with angry immigrants.

"It's a tactic that we believe is being used to put a halt to the mass mobilization," he said.

Fear alone may not be enough to keep people from crossing borders. At the Camarillo lemon grove, workers worry about being separated from their families and sent to villages where there are no jobs and less money.

But if they are picked up, they know what they'll do.

"I'd just come back," said a man on his way to an unpicked lemon tree.